How best to waste my time

Dr. Phillips is a Professor of Radiology, Director of Head
and Neck Imaging, at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New
York–Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY. He is a member of the Applied Radiology Editorial Advisory Board.

This
is going to be the first of a many-part diatribe. I’m tired. (Yeah,
yeah, I know. And I’m old.) But, here’s the thing – I have lost
efficiency. Time is wasted, and NOT OF MY OWN CHOOSING. There are
concerted and dedicated efforts to waste my time. On a daily basis. So,
I’m going to go down a few of them, not necessarily in any order, just
as they come to me. And, you all know that I operate in a somewhat
random fashion, anyway.

Here’s the first. This may be multi-part in and of itself. Outside films. AAAAAGGHHHH!

If
you want to shorten my life, show up at my door with a handful of CDs
from (hopefully) different institutions. All with different reading
programs, because you know I just can’t stand having any consistency in
my life. Sometimes, I almost find myself wishing for the days of film,
because all I had to have was a viewbox and some reasonable quiet. Now, I
need 6 PCs, and infinite patience (LOADING, LOADING, LOADING). It’s not
that I don’t want to help you out, Mr. Clinician Friend. I just want to
be modestly productive, in order to justify my salary. I’d like to
generate a few RVUs of my own. Because I know I damn sure won’t see any
from this interaction. So, you put in the disk, you pray you’ve seen the
viewer before (so you don’t have to read the instructions, and look
stupid as you try to figure out which side is right on the sagittals),
and you hope it opens.

How many times has this happened to you?
You put in the disk, it won’t start, you work through the directory, and
can’t find the viewer program, or you try it several times, and it says
“Error — incomplete something or other,” and you look at the person who
handed you the disk in humble exasperation after killing 20 minutes,
and they say, “You know, that is the same thing it did for me. We
thought you might have some way of getting around that.” AAAGGHHH! In
that setting, what I think should be allowed is a radiology version of a
dope slap.I will keep a baseball bat close by the workstation for just
such an occasion.

I also like the little disclaimer that “the
patient brought in their old study,” or even worse, “old studies.” I’ve
been handed disks that looked like someone took them to the beach and
played with them in the sand. Or encrusted with bubble gum. Or, they
have a stack of CDs the thickness of the Gutenberg bible.

“Please
compare to all prior exams.” Right. Because, you know, I just didn’t
have another thing to do for the next week and a half.

I’m not done with this one. I feel a powerful rant boiling. We shall continue. Mahalo.

Read the second part of this Wet Read series, Part Deux: How best to waste my time, in the October 2012 issue of Applied Radiology.